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March 16, 2018 D beyond the specs | ||||
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Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.? I've always been intrigued by the fact that it originated in the US but that it's in "the old world" that a lot of enthusiasts (and contributors) are found. It's just because you would usually associate innovation with the "new world", but in this particular case D must have struck a chord with the old world. Is it marketing and economic / pragmatic factors that lead to poor adoption rates (and sometimes outright hostility) in the US. Maybe, but I think there's something in the engineering approach and the concepts that "talks" to us in the "old world". I think this is an interesting topic as regards both culture and technology. Any technology is embedded in and the product of a certain culture / way of thinking - and D seems to be a special case. Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;) |
March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to Chris | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
> Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)
Hint: Do not write a Ph.D based on impressions ;-)
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March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to psychoticRabbit | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 12:43:03 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:
> On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)
>
> Hint: Do not write a Ph.D based on impressions ;-)
Hint: Do not write a Ph.D. at all ;)
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March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to Chris | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 13:51:03 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 12:43:03 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:
>> On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>> Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)
>>
>> Hint: Do not write a Ph.D based on impressions ;-)
>
> Hint: Do not write a Ph.D. at all ;)
Hint: Do not write
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March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to bauss | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:18:16 UTC, bauss wrote:
> On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 13:51:03 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 12:43:03 UTC, psychoticRabbit wrote:
>>> On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>>> Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)
>>>
>>> Hint: Do not write a Ph.D based on impressions ;-)
>>
>> Hint: Do not write a Ph.D. at all ;)
>
> Hint: Do not write
Hint: Just don't.
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March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to Chris | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
> Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.?
Made-up theory that probably isn't worth anything without measurements:
In providing an improvement over C++, including more safety and GC, D (unwillingly) positionned itself being spiritual successor in the Wirth's family of language. And Niklaus Wirth was from Switzerland so _perhaps_ the nearby territory is already more favourable to alternatives native languages.
Let the speculation begin!
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March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to Chris | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
> Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.? I've always been intrigued by the fact that it originated in the US but that it's in "the old world" that a lot of enthusiasts (and contributors) are found. It's just because you would usually associate innovation with the "new world", but in this particular case D must have struck a chord with the old world. Is it marketing and economic / pragmatic factors that lead to poor adoption rates (and sometimes outright hostility) in the US. Maybe, but I think there's something in the engineering approach and the concepts that "talks" to us in the "old world". I think this is an interesting topic as regards both culture and technology. Any technology is embedded in and the product of a certain culture / way of thinking - and D seems to be a special case. Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)
Well, Algol, Pascal, Oberon, Component Pascal, VHDL, Ada are all examples of programming languages successfully used in Europe, while having adoption issues on US.
Even Delphi is still having regular conferences and magazine articles here in Germany.
Maybe we care more about enforced code quality? :)
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March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to Paulo Pinto | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:50:26 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote: > > Well, Algol, Pascal, Oberon, Component Pascal, VHDL, Ada are all examples of programming languages successfully used in Europe, while having adoption issues on US. > > Even Delphi is still having regular conferences and magazine articles here in Germany. Now that's interesting, so maybe there is a pattern or a quality those languages have in common. > Maybe we care more about enforced code quality? :) Now, this an interesting point. Mind you, Python (forced indentation) is also a European language. "Quick and dirty" is more common in the US in the sense that they don't philosophize about things but just do them and see what happens (that's why they are often ahead of Europe when it comes to technology). There are loads of good ideas that never made it past the meetings, because they weren't "perfect" yet, while in the US they just did it and improved it later. Is this also the reason why D sometimes suffers from the "the perfect is the enemy of the good" syndrome? @Guillaume Theories are always made up, else they wouldn't be _theories_ ;) |
March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to Chris | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote:
> Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.? I've always been intrigued by the fact that it originated in the US but that it's in "the old world" that a lot of enthusiasts (and contributors) are found. It's just because you would usually associate innovation with the "new world", but in this particular case D must have struck a chord with the old world. Is it marketing and economic / pragmatic factors that lead to poor adoption rates (and sometimes outright hostility) in the US. Maybe, but I think there's something in the engineering approach and the concepts that "talks" to us in the "old world". I think this is an interesting topic as regards both culture and technology. Any technology is embedded in and the product of a certain culture / way of thinking - and D seems to be a special case. Hint: there's a Ph.D. in it ;)
Here's a half-assed theory :P
Maybe the name has something to do with it :D, Americans have always made fun about it, strong D jokes (no pun here) make it hard to talk about it with a straight face around your college dorm buddies. Also I assume no water cooler talks will go unnoticed when everyone talks about the D.
Anyhow, it is interesting that, at least apparently, there are more people involved with Dlang in Europe.
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March 16, 2018 Re: D beyond the specs | ||||
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Posted in reply to Guillaume Piolat | On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 14:45:28 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote: > On Friday, 16 March 2018 at 11:44:59 UTC, Chris wrote: >> Would it be possible to find out at DConf in Munich why exactly D is so popular in Germany (my impression) and in other countries of Europe (and that general post code) like France, Italy, GB, Romania and Russia etc.? > > Made-up theory that probably isn't worth anything without measurements: > > In providing an improvement over C++, including more safety and GC, D (unwillingly) positionned itself being spiritual successor in the Wirth's family of language. And Niklaus Wirth was from Switzerland so _perhaps_ the nearby territory is already more favourable to alternatives native languages. > > Let the speculation begin! Huh, that's pretty much what I was going to say, particularly with Paulo always bringing up Oberon in here. :) Let me add to the theory: the US private fund-raising enviroment was quicker to take risks with such quick-and-dirty tech, which led to Sun and Microsoft pushing UNIX and Windows and C and C++ to global dominance. For example, the Silicon Valley investors, used to putting millions into chips, quickly starting dumping money into these software startups too: https://stratechery.com/2018/lessons-from-spotify/ The current wave of iOS/Android and Obj-c/Java is merely the next iteration from Silicon Valley. However, let me posit a change in the environment that now favors different kinds of tech. I'd argue open source is a much more powerful force these days than those prior factors. Rather than a single company driving a language or OS, you have to have many contributors, both companies and individuals, for open source or you'll get swamped by the crowd, which is why Android and Java/Swift have been mostly open-sourced. This led to the OSS scripting languages that focused on ease of use- python, ruby, etc.- and a race to the bottom, ie javascript and php. It's now leading to thoughtful attempts to dislodge C/C++: D, Nim, Rust, Swift, Crystal, etc. My point is that it appears that the time of local tech champions winning out is ending. With open source, all of us all over the world can now take part in building out the foundational tech. :) |
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